


all that remains

by dreamlaunch (mayuaka)



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Character Death, M/M, Mild Blood, Murder Disguised as Suicide, Unhappy Ending, no actual romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 15:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18252989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayuaka/pseuds/dreamlaunch
Summary: ten summons a demon.





	all that remains

**Author's Note:**

> very loosely based on a certain book series. i don't know how i wrote this either

_INDEX OF KNOWN DEMONS, CHAPTER 23, PAGE 337._  

  * __QIAN KUN.—Category ???.__



_Origin unknown. Unable to assess power range, but seems to be able to act on all seven planes of existence. Summon with caution._

 

* * *

  

he kisses taeyong for the first time under the light of a streetlamp on a cold december night. the taste of strawberry lip balm in his mouth, the warmth of taeyong’s hands intertwined with his, the shine of his freshly dyed pink hair—he melts into it and lets himself fall in love.

he sees taeyong for the last time in the darkened entryway of the offices. taeyong, eyes filled with tears, hands clenched into fists, shouts at him: _you’re such a cruel person. don’t you have any remorse?_

 

* * *

 

_[TWO YEARS LATER.]_

the first day passes, then the second. on the morning of the third day, as he’s sitting across from doyoung at breakfast, the other slides his phone across the table. “hey, look at this.”

 _BREAK-IN ATTEMPT AT LEE TAEYONG ESTATE,_ it reads. _A demon estimated to be in the level 4 category allegedly broke through—_

“what do you think they were trying for?” doyoung asks, stirring his coffee.

ten shrugs. “at least his security works.” he pushes the phone back.

“are you…” doyoung trails off, then continues, “are you worried about him?”

“does it matter?” ten snaps, without thinking, and doyoung flinches back a bit. “sorry,” he mumbles quietly, not looking up.

“it’s okay.” doyoung reaches across the table to take ten’s hand. “i’m here for you, okay? no matter what.”

he glances up a bit, just slightly. doyoung’s expression is so earnest, so hopeful, so determined. “thank you,” he says, after a moment.

doyoung lightly squeezes his hand. “of course.”

ten remembers this moment clearly, like if it was playing on a much too high quality tv screen, beautiful but unnatural to the naked eye. if he put in his contacts and looked at it then, he might see a fleeting, brief, transitory wisp of darkness on the fifth plane that became larger and larger until it filled the air in his lungs with uncertainty and foreboding, poisoning his thoughts and emotions until they were unrecognizable.

 

* * *

 

on the fourth day, something impossible happens.

the demon he’d summoned is in the garden. he can see it from the window in the kitchen, and he nearly drops his coffee. he looks out again, and sure enough, it’s still there.

(or maybe it’s just a pretty stranger, with the name qian kun and soft, slightly ruffled brown hair.)

in a rush, he manages to find chalk in the art room and runs back downstairs to start drawing a protective circle in the kitchen. he’s not risking anything right now. (coincidentally, doyoung’s not in the house at this moment, which he’s endlessly thankful for.)

he’s not sure what happens after that.

 

* * *

 

he stumbles back into the house in a daze, not quite breathing properly. he—he needs to—

“ten! have you seen—”

everything is kind of—spinning. flickering. darkening…

there’s someone faintly yelling, but he doesn't know what they’re saying.

“hi,” kun says. it’s not kun. it’s taeyong, laying next to him under the blankets. his hair is a bright pink.

“don’t you miss me?” taeyong asks, flickering in and out of existence. “i missed you, you know.”

“i found out,” kun says. “you’re such a cruel person.” his hand curls around ten’s. “don’t you have any remorse?” then kun’s hands turn into sharp claws and there’s blood everywhere, soaking into the sheets, staining him forever.

everything is red, red, red….

he kisses kun under the light of a streetlamp on a cold december night. the taste of blood in his mouth, the warmth of kun’s hands intertwined with his, the shine of his freshly dyed blonde hair—he melts into the perfectly crafted illusion and lets himself fall.

he hears, but does not see, a familiar person’s voice whispering, taunting him.

_you’re such a cruel person. don’t you have any remorse?_

“oh! you’re awake. thank god, i was so worried.”

ten blinks. doyoung hovers above him, relief softening his features. he sits up too quickly, leaning back against the pillows of the couch, his vision blacking out at the edges; there’s pain creeping through his head somewhere, threatening to drag him back in.

“what were you going to tell me?”

a look of confusion falls upon doyoung’s face, then clears. “it...doesn’t–i mean, are you okay? you stumbled into the kitchen and passed out.” he pauses. “have you been overworking yourself again?”

ten does not deserve the soft, gentle care encapsulated in doyoung’s voice. knowing this, he presses, “what was it?”

doyoung sighs. slowly, reluctantly, he draws out the phone from his pocket and pulls up an article, handing it to him.

_LEE TAEYONG ALLEGEDLY COMMITS SUICIDE, WITNESSES CLAIM OTHERWISE._

_27 February 20XX_

_Just this morning, multi-millionaire magic user and music artist Lee Taeyong was found dead in the living room of his manor, holding a paper that contained a suicide note. No external injuries were discovered. Police are currently investigating the cause of death, while several witnesses have come forward to report that a man was seen leaving the house an hour before. An unclear picture of the suspect has been spread around the internet, leading many to believe that the suspect may be ‘Ten’, his ex-boyfriend and in the running for the position of Relations Coordinator alongside him. Police urge citizens not to–_

the phone falls from his hand. doyoung catches it before it has a chance to slide off the couch and onto the floor.

“i’m gonna make dinner, okay? and then i’ll personally go over to their headquarters and threaten them to never pull that shit again,” doyoung declares, all in a rush, defensive and determined and concerned. “please, get some rest.” he adjusts the pillows as ten lies down properly again, fixing the corners of the blanket carefully.

ten stares up at the ceiling, seeing nothing and everything at once, feeling nothing and everything at once, losing nothing and everything at once.

 

* * *

 

he sleeps through the fifth day, mostly. doyoung brings him food that he accepts. on the sixth day, an hour before dawn, he manages to rouse himself from the couch and drag his barely tangible body to the library and draw a protective circle. he sits, cross-legged inside of it, fighting the urge to doze off and leave himself vulnerable to the demon that would show up soon.

as soon as the sun crests the horizon, slanting through the windows, it appears.

“it’s nice to see you again,” it says, smiling, as ten managed to stand on his feet.

“you implicated me.” he means to sound accusatory and threatening, but instead he is too slow, too tired. “you assumed my appearance.”

“it was interesting,” it continues, “getting to know you. do you know what he said when he first saw me? he told me that he forgave you. that he understood that you were desperate, and that you never meant to hurt him.”

he sees himself, slipping through taeyong’s security barriers, nearly getting caught by a sentry  before finding taeyong himself, alone and working on a track on his computer. he sees the look of surprise, then anger, then relief accompanied with tears on taeyong’s face. then he sees kun, in front of him, smiling serenely.

“of course, since i only fulfilled part of your orders, i suppose i have to return to nonexistence for another few hundred years.” the edges of its form begin to flicker: taeyong, himself, kun. “would you care to join me?”

(every magic user is taught, since they are young, to make every order clear, with no loopholes in case a demon exploited it and hurt its summoner. the demon is bound to the order; if it does not execute it correctly, it ceases to exist. ten remembers, belatedly, the story told to them, of a demon who refused to kill and was therefore ripped apart, destroying itself and its summoner.)

with the last of its power, the demon creates an explosion of white light that slips through the protective circle and consumes him.

 

* * *

 

_[SIX DAYS AGO.]_

when the demon appears, he’s expecting something overtly grotesque and horrifying, covered in blood or with too many sharp teeth, accompanied by a nasty, putrid smell that permeates the room. he expects an explosion of sparks and purple smoke, fire erupting among his extensive, meticulously well cared for collection of ancient texts—he’d fallen for that one when he was thirteen, and he was miraculously lucky to have been practicing a summons on very low level imp (though being tricked by one in the first place left quite the injury on his pride) and escaped with only a small, now nearly unnoticeable scar on his left leg. so he considered himself practically an expert on the many foul, albeit creative deceptions of spirits, ranging from one whose form still occasionally manifested itself in his nightmares, to, of course, the tiny imp from ten years ago.

instead, the spirit appears to him in a distinctly human form—one might assume having been copied from a human it held an intense contempt for, and therefore wished to have whatever heinous order (and most orders of spirits were usually criminal, including his) it was tasked with to be accidentally blamed on them, at least for a short period of time. obviously, anyone with a plane viewer (usually in the form of contacts) could easily grasp the truth. his first instinct then, obviously, is to examine each plane carefully for the demon’s true form.

on the second plane, it was human, of course, but it was the principle of the matter to check each and every one; the third was the same, and the fourth, and, unfortunately, the fifth as well.

(it was during this moment that he faintly observed that the human form the spirit had chosen was quite beautiful. not too over the top, there was something naturally soothing about it.)

he had no access to the sixth and seventh planes, at least not without performing a few more incantations, and he’d have to step out of the protective circle to do that. he proceeds with his order instead; after all, if the demon’s true form was so masterfully hidden, perhaps it was something even more horrifying than he had ever seen, beyond his scope of extensive experience and creative imagination.

“qian kun. you are ordered to kill the magic user, lee taeyong, in no uncertain terms within the next five days. you can only return to me at the dawn of the sixth day to report your success. you may not execute this order with any possible pieces of evidence left pointing to your current summoner, whether through physical items or through any type of communication.”

the spirit eyes him curiously. “what’s your name?”

he smiles. (they always love asking that one, as if someone with even just a single brain cell would fall for it.) “it’s ten. i will begin the dismissal chant in five seconds.”

“perhaps you’ll give me ten seconds, then?” its eyes are filled with amusement.

“if you fail to complete my order—”

“it seems that humans have not changed at all since i was last summoned,” the spirit interrupts, (quite rudely, he thinks.) “how disappointing.” with a final, almost unsettlingly calm smile, the demon disappears before he can forcefully dismiss it, presumably on its way to infiltrate the many complexities of lee taeyong’s magical security barriers. ten was being quite generous with the five day time limit, honestly. in any case, with his plan now put in place, he could feel a bit more at ease. soon, his spot in the republic would be secured.

so why did he still feel a bit uneasy?

 

* * *

 

_TIMELINE._

_TWO YEARS AGO._ Ten kills a threat to Lee Taeyong’s position of Relations Assistant.

 _SIX DAYS AGO._ Ten summons Qian Kun.

 _TWO DAYS AGO._ Lee Taeyong dies.

 _PRESENT._ Ten is found dead in his library by Kim Doyoung. No cause of death can be determined.


End file.
